Monday, August 09, 2004

I was looking at the stars tonight.

All those small points of cold, hard light looking unblinkingly down on the earth as we hurtle through the vacuum of space. As I stared up into the endless deep, I began imagining that dance of flame and fire, nebulous clouds of gas and and dust; formations light years across that have such a short lifespan that it barely registers on a cosmic timeframe.

Silence.

We are an anomoly. We exist on the quiet, uneventful fringe of an unremarkable galaxy. And yet here we are. We look at the universe, we imagine it, we sing about it, dance to it, create by it. We observe and appreciate what little we can of this glorious vastness. How amazing! Such a small little planet, such torn and inscrutable creatures we are who inhabit it. And we have come to a place in time where even if we are the only sentient life in all this creation, it is enough.

It is enough because we have achieved something wonderful, and that achievement is that we see and learn and know. As a human family, we have come to appreciate not only the grand unfolding of all this...existence, but we choose to claim a place within it.

I was looking at the stars tonight.

And I wonder what place we claim among them.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"As a human family, we have come to appreciate not only the grand unfolding of all this...existence, but we choose to claim a place within it"
Choose? We were thrown into the midst of it in a 'sink or swim' fashion...on in your words, 'stake a place' or cease to exist. What other choice was there?
Anyway, to ease you angst, I am willing to reveal the answer to all your existential questions (or any other questions you may have)
Ready? The answer is '42'. But then again, you already knew that, didn't you?
Me

Anonymous said...

Ha ha...yes, I believe a little fish whispered it into my ear...

The dangers of posting late at night (which I often do) is that thoughts are incomplete.

Indeed we were thrown into the fray, but as human beings, I think we do we make a choice to stay in it or not. Some people feel we will choose the latter and exterminate ourselves with radiation or disease, others have hope we will pass through these troubles and "mature".

Myself, I simply have hope. Most of us are fairly sane (by what standard? We have only our individual gauges, which is a little disturbing - or should be) and hopefully one day we will find a way to deal with the pyschotic urges of power and control.

To do that, I think, we do not need to get rid of fear, but the inability to cope with fear.

Fear is an essential ingredient in a healthy life, and when we try to excise it, in my view we become a little imbalanced. Last night when I was looking up into the sky I was filled with awe and beauty, but along side that was the terror of a gaping maw of nothingness into which we are all falling, isolated and alone.

Life has to be rife with fear. This is how we know we are strong and vital.

But of course, I could be wrong.